no introduction needed- he'll introduce himself

black swans - not the one I didn't get a shot of in NZ but the ones I took scores of pictures of in the Berlin zoo.

Dale

[Snow Geese]

Snow Geese   Gayle

Gayle - Thank you for the incredible snow geese!!! I just love the formations in the sky in the photos - you can see those same layers in parts of the video, too - a tremendous video, including the voice yelling, "I'm SO gonna get crapped on, and it's SO gonna be worth it!"

Patti - the scarlet tanager picture is not sucky at all, if you see it not as a photo of a red bird but a photo of redness itself (that happens to need to appear in the form of a bird - it'd be too scary to see redness with nothing there).

What is SUPER EXTRA not-sucky, though, is the light in the second (not-frenetic) sanderling photo

dale

when I look at lorikeets I feel like I'VE been at the eggnog.

Aafke, your photographs and videos are wonderful!  Thank you so much for sharing!  And for thanks also for devising this ABC of birds!  Gayle 

I second that. Thank you again, Aafke. This was a great idea.

Anne, I'm loving hearing of your stealth tree trimming. You should take a picture and show us what it looks like, but maybe not until you (and you helper/helpers) have had a chance to do some more decorating! Jan in CT

I second that - I'd love to see a picture!!!  dale

interesting to see how the gradual approach works. I like it a LOT!  The year I did it, to two random trees, one in a park and one in an apartment building front yard, it was an all-out festooning at midnight; people did mess with it some, but in neither case was it treated badly.

Incredible TEXTURES and COLORS and LIGHT in the sandhill photos, Gayle!

6-foot-tall towhee looks like he could bite your head off. Funny how if you magnify "cute" with a good strong lens it turns into "Don't make me come over there...!"

those spoonbills are so science fiction.

Here is a drawing I did a number of years ago, from a TERRIFIC photo by Chad and Chris Saladin - a confrontation between a RED-TAILED HAWK and a peregrine falcon.

Dale

btw Chris tells me that the peregrine here is Hillary from the Hilliard Road Bridge nest site. they have been watching her since she first came to that site as a first-year bird.  She'll be 9 years old this year.

Gayle - I LOVE those white spots on your stilt's head. False eyes, like on a fish.
Mine was a different kind of stilt than this. Do you know what kind?

Last one for me tonight - will pass the torch to the west coast...

Drawings of Chris's rockstar SCREECH OWLETS when he took the owlbox down (2 different years) to attach a branching stick.

From his photos. If I had a screech owlet on my hand I'd take pictures of it too.

Dale

Is that the same bird?  Why is he so yellow in one photo and so red in the other?

vagaries of flash?

maybe a different year? dunno. Same bird for sure. Made enough racket for 10.

you know, Patti - I just remembered; I got him when he was still really young; when they are little they have tons of green, but one of these photos may have been an intermediate stage and one of the fully mature bird. Although he was never really "mature."

Is that the same bird?  Why is he so yellow in one photo and so red in the other?

vagaries of flash?

maybe a different year? dunno. Same bird for sure. Made enough racket for 10.

Terrific contributions, ladies!  I am still working on mine.

Who you calling a lady? I saw a BLACK SWAN in New Zealand, but have no photo of it. 
A lady would have taken at least a modest snapshot.

YOW someone's on a roll.
Killer gull photos, both of them.

Hmmm...hard act to follow, that one.

Sun Conure - the LOUDEST of my past pets.

-a photo of him pretending to be a pear;

-a photo where he's posing with another S-BIRD, albeit of a plastic subspecies.

Dale